Blossoms,

I’ve been chippering away at various pieces: a list of 100 things I’ve done in 2020, doing my review of 2020 workbooks (and sharing in my Instagram stories as I go) and illustrating a PDF about creating e-courses.

I’ve been creating every day, which is that whole point of this Press Publish Every Day experiment. But still, I have missed these daily, ambling check-ins. So here I am.

It’s the last few days before Christmas, and I am sliding into home base, totally organised. Fuck, the sense of contentment I have about it is BEYOND.

My kid is on a rampage reading all of Raina Taigmeier’s books. I love when my kids fall in book love. It makes me remember my own childhood book binges – they are some of my favourite memories. (And if you know of books similar to Raina’s please hit us up – we are quickly running out of supplies!)

Tomorrow we’ll go grocery shopping for fresh fruit & veges, and I’ll do a bit of cleaning. I might even go crazy and mop some damn floors! Seriously, my executive functioning is pretty… functioning at the moment! I am very impressed with myself!

Then Thursday, I will do some Christmas Day food prep with my 10yo helping in the kitchen. Wild Bushman Dad will arrive to spend Christmas with us. The kids will construct a gingerbread house. And I’ll wrap my Dad’s Christmas presents for him, because he has managed to live 60+ years without wrapping shit, and he’s not going to start now.

I’ve promised myself that I can map out 2021 in my calendar & planner after Boxing Day. I think I’m looking forward to it the most out of anything. WHO HAVE I EVEN BECOME.

Bushman will hang out for a few days, and we’ll do the usual: play endless board games, eat, talk shit. It’s a solid plan for a Christmas, really.

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It’s the next day.

We’ve done the grocery shopping, which felt awkward and stressful. Australia has been mostly COVID-free for a while now, but there’s been an outbreak in Sydney. My state has begun locking borders again, but I know there are a LOT of Sydney peeps who made a mad dash across the border to the Sunshine Coast where I’m at. I didn’t love the crowded shops, and I didn’t love when the (otherwise lovely) older lady behind me told me her family were from Sydney and were part of the mass exodus to come visit her. They’d taken tests, and were negative, but I felt like I was holding my breath. Let’s see if the Sydney diaspora creates an outbreak. If it does, GOODBYE WORLD! I SHALL RETREAT TO MY HERMIT CAVE ONCE MORE!

I also saw some douche canoe wearing a Trump t-shirt at the grocery store.

I wrote about it on social media:

I saw someone today at the grocery store who was wearing a Trump shirt, and it made me viscerally wince. For a moment there, I felt unsafe. Because right there, in that one shirt, I knew at his core he did not believe in my humanity as a woman. He did not believe in the humanity of BIPOC, or LGBTQIA+ people or people who did not subscribe to some fucked up, gun toting version of Christianity. He only believed in the supremacy of white, straight, cis men, and was emboldened to share this openly.

And all of this, in a T-shirt, and my resultant grief and sadness and anger… it made me realise how difficult it must be to live in the US right now. How everyday, you see people wearing these emblems, proud to share that they don’t believe in your humanity, or anybody else’s. It must feel traumatic, over and over.

And I wanted you to know that I love you and see you and support your humanity. Now and always.

Love, Leonie.

What is fascinating is: on Instagram, whenever I write political posts, it’s relatively quiet and chill and peeps just saying “yep. totally.” But Facebook? Fuuuuuck me. The Trumpettes come out SWINGING. I would say 2/3rds of the comments have needed to be deleted and banned. Some telling me to shut the fuck up, some arguing the case that being a Trump supporter doesn’t make you racist, sexist or homophobic.

And I just don’t get the disconnect, you know?

If you voted for Trump, you voted for someone who is harmful to women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people. He is outwardly verbally abusive to them. He supports laws that harm them. He emboldens alt-right hate groups to be violent towards them. There’s no ifs or buts here. You can’t be a Trump supporter and claim to be anti-racist and fighting for equality for all people. It’s mathematically impossible.

Anyways, I was surprised that I even get Trumpettes on my social media now. I thought I’d scared them off long ago. But still, they keep coming out of the woodwork. I think part of it is that on Facebook, a lot of people re-share the post as a way of expressing or validating their own opinion, so I get all these rando racist relatives from their pages, instead of my own people.

Either way, I’ll keep turning up, keep talking, and keep banning.

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I was talking to my mate Katie last night. We were bemoaning the loss of blog world 2004-2014. It was a bloody great decade of writing and creating and reading. I felt so lucky to get to deep dives into people’s stories through their blogs, in a way I never experience on social media. Social media is just so shallow and short and impenetrable… no way to experience that same deep dive.

Do you still read old school blogs? I do. I wish more people were writing them. Let me know your favourite blogs to read so I can add them to my list! I use Bloglovin’ to keep up with all of mine.

As we were talking about it, I mentioned my dogs to Katie. Katie asked to know more, so I found an old blog post I wrote about my beloved Charlie. Then, I re-read it, and was overcome with tears of sadness, and tears of gladness that I had recorded that special time. And I realised: that’s why I’m doing this Press Publish Every Day experiment. To get into the habit of writing these longer letters again. To share my heart in this medium that feels most truthful to me. And to let you experience the gift of a deep-dive into someone else’s life too.

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I’ve realised that this is probably my last proper work session for a week or so. Wild Bushman Dad arrives tomorrow, and I’ll be deep in food prep for Christmas. Then, the days when I have no idea what day of the week it is, when napping and board games and talking shit are my highest priority.

But I might want to write. Let’s see.

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I hope the holidays ahead for you are gentle, dear penpal.

I am sending you love, as always.
Love,
Leonie